


Hearing You

by Aly_H



Category: Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Bards and Music, Fifth Blight, Gen, M/M, Multiple Wardens (Dragon Age), Post-Blight, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tumblr Prompt, other people's ocs, t for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-07 03:30:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16846264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aly_H/pseuds/Aly_H
Summary: Prompt: "But I want to hear you sing"Written in a multi-Warden shared AU where Nico Mahariel is concerned with Evander Tabris's refusal to play music following his slaying the Archdemon on Fort Drakon.





	Hearing You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hoehoehoelt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoehoehoelt/gifts).



> Written for @hoehoehoelt on tumblr. Originally posted there.

The damage from the attack was being repaired. Anders and Oghren had mostly recovered from their Joinings. Alistair had provided them some guards to replace their dead for the time being but their first few days with an Arling of their own were apparently going quite poorly. On top of it Van was emptying his private funds into the repairs for the Keep but that could only last so long.

Nico threw the door to his office open without even a knock – and Van spared the short tempered Dalish elf a brief glare.

Nico, of all the strange gaggle of Wardens, had been the most perplexing at Ostagar. The Dalish elf watched everything with a sort of unnatural stillness to him save for the occasional twitch of his ears in disapproval. And he had recognized how dangerous the smiling flat-ear was from the start, marking him for a murderer where most their company did not realize how bloody Van’s hands had been prior to his recruitment. Still it meant that Nico was one of the few people in the keep to whom Van showed his true face.

Bards smiled and charmed and were made all the more dangerous for the lie of their harmlessness. It’d been unnerving enough to find himself at Ostagar. Let alone with a feverish Dalish snob seeing right through him.

“Here to volunteer for the Warden-Constable position?” he asked, mustering his customary grin to his face.

“You look like shit,” Nico informed him, then held up a lute. “Come on.”

The new one that Alistair had gifted Van following the Coronation celebrations. A way of thanking him for being the one to lead through the Blight. It was a fine instrument, higher quality even than the ones he had played in the Chantry as a youth, but it had gone untouched for nearly three months, in fact the case to it _had_ been shoved beneath his bed.

Van shook his head, “I can’t. This stuff won’t wait just because the rest of my waking hours are spent dealing with the Darkspawn crisis.”

Nico frowned, “You haven’t touched your instruments since before Denerim.”

Since before he’d sunk his sword into the Archdemon’s skull, so close to the source of the song that he had practically tasted the Blight music on his tongue as it rattled through his veins demanding he _listen, listen, listen_.

Nico was wrong – he _had_ tried. But the song in his mind, in that quiet inner ear had been the dying cacophony that had deafened him, the one that had filled that week of restless dreams when no one was certain whether he would wake or not. The sorrowful echo of memory, the dirge of a dying goddess.

He had woken foggily, Morrigan’s promise kept and somewhere beyond his reach, forbidden from his gaze and care his child would be born.

He’d been silent even during Chantry services. In his youth he had considered serving Andraste. Now his throat closed and his jaw ached from clenching when he attended. When the funerals of those lost in the Siege of Denerim had ended he had quit going.

Nico’s ears twitched – frustrated, fed up, or maybe worried. This wasn’t the first time they had had this conversation, and paperwork was not the first excuse that Van had made.

“Fine, have fun with your stupid papers that don’t matter,” he said, setting the lute on Van’s desk so that he would _have_ to touch it if he wished to be productive. At least to move it.

“Nico-”

“I am leaving you alone, Evander…” he stopped in the door way, ears flicking angrily as he glared back at the city elf, “But I want to hear you sing so I will keep doing this.”

He stalked away. Not two months after the Mother’s death, Nico froze as he heard the voice drift in from one of the out of the way walkways. That was _Van’s_ voice, but not the way he sang in battle when no other option was left.

It was one of Van’s favorites, he recognized it right away, about a girl who fell in love with the moon and made her presents to prove her love. Until the moon, returning that love, brought her love up to the heavens to live in her starry palace and even to this day the lovers dance together, laughing in the sky. Van had sung in so many times during the Blight that sometimes the others who had been on the journey would catch themselves humming snatches under their breath.

Peering around the corner he found that the out of the way walkway whose parapet had never been repaired after the second assault by Darkspawn had been claimed for a picnic.

Nathaniel Howe’s fingers were the ones playing the lute, smiling a little as he listened to Van sing the song. A bottle of wine sat between them.

As the song ended Howe leaned over to kiss Van who laughed and gestured for him to hand over the lute, “Nuh-uh, it’s your turn. Let’s see if you know this one?”

Van stole another kiss before striking the first jaunty chords to _The Ballad of Nuggins_. Howe groaned – definitely recognizing the song –

“The blight was upon us, and we found no pardon,” Nathaniel’s voice was lower and rougher as he sang and the fond exasperation at being made to sing the ridiculous song or admit defeat was clearly there.

Nico rolled his eyes and turned away – those two being stupidly in love was annoying but it was nice to hear Van singing again. Even if they _did_ have that stupid shem to thank for it.

“Tripped up the Darkspawn, and now he’s a Warden!” Van’s voice joined Nate’s full of laughter and a good deal more confident. “Nuggins, Nuggins! For all in the Land!”


End file.
